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About Me

My (nick)name is Moz and this blog was originally about my travails, tribulations and (occasional) small successes while writing my Honours thesis and fighting the demons of my mental illness. Said thesis was nicknamed Frankie and this is my first blog. These days I am working on my Masters thesis, and still trying to string words together that make some sense.
My financial vices include a good cup of coffee, live music, and buying real newspapers so I can do the crossword. Unsurprisingly I love books, and am a bit obsessed with writing the perfect letter and making an even more perfect mix CD. I earn part of my living as a wedding singer in Sydney, Australia, but long term I hope to research, write and teach as an academic, and travel further than interstate. David Bowie once referred to me as 'the quintessential girl from Ipanema' - it briefly made my mother proud.

My Manic and I

I’m an all or nothing girl. I don’t know what ‘the middle
ground’ looks like. I have an addictive personality and I don’t love or hate by
halves. When I disagree with something I have a lot of trouble pulling my head
in, something that made high school especially difficult and me a bit of a
target in some workplaces. An already emotional person, when I am passionate
about something I will move heaven and earth to make sure that people join my
side. It’s already obvious that my strengths and vices are very much two sides
of the same ideological coin.

After saying that, it won’t come as a surprise that I suffer
from Bipolar II. I’ve almost certainly had it since I was about 15 but I was
only diagnosed properly about eighteen months ago (I’m a little over 28). My
official diagnosis also includes a comorbid Generalised Anxiety Disorder and I
suffer from chronic insomnia. Sometimes the insomnia is even more debilitating
than the illness, and that’s saying something.

Writing it so baldly on the (internet) page like that is
hard for me. I hate my petty, vicious illness. I lost most of my twenties to it
after it spun out of control at the end of 2004. I managed to get through my
late teenage years by stringing together enough good days when it counted and I
have skated academically my entire life. But about eight years ago this was no
longer enough.

It’s hard to describe what suffering from a chronic illness
is like. People often talk about their lives breaking into pieces. But this
implies that there are bits to piece back together, that you can go back to how
things were. It’s not like that.

A few times I have described it as like being in a bathtub
with soap and bubbles and warm water. There might be music and candles and whatever
– the point is that you are present and warm and everything is - well, not fine, but liveable. And then
suddenly it’s just you, in an empty tub, and it’s cold. There’s nothing to put
back together and you discover that a quarter of your life has passed you by.

You don’t get your twenties back. Most of my (very high
achieving) friends have been living so fully in the ensuing years that they don’t
quite understand what it’s been like. They have jobs and marriages and hobbies
and houses and post grad degrees at very impressive places and some of them even
have kids. My one priority has been clinging onto a life that, until very
recently, I did not want to live. Not even a little bit.

People talk about the stigma of mental illness and that’s
under-selling it. I have had to lie about a lot of things these last years. No one
wants to be a guinea pig and the one who maybe changes how people think. I have
family who see a very clever young woman seemingly wasting her life and faffing
around for years at a time. But these are the same family members who think
psychiatrists are the devil and that mental illness isn’t real. And some of
them don’t know how to keep a secret, so I’ve never told them. My parents are
ashamed of me for many reasons but chief among them is my illness and how it
has brought me low and unable to do very much. (I was the kid with all the
potential.) My friends, many of whom have only known me since I began to get
sick, have seemingly given up on me ever doing anything of real worth.
And many of them, people MY AGE, the generation who supposedly should have a
handle on mental illness and what it might mean, do not ‘get it’. It is as
simple, and as devastating, as that. Some kinds of discrimination are alive and
well among us.

Part of this is because the perception of people who have
Bipolar is that they are cruel and spiteful and manipulative and sometimes
violent. And this can sometimes be true. This perception is why I can’t readily
admit to having this illness and why I have to explain away gaps on my resume
as being times that I ‘cared for a family member who was ill’. It’s as close to
the truth as you can tell in a job interview.

This perception, this shame, is partly why I don’t talk
about my illness and why I am not honest about it. I have a lot of faults but I
am not an unkind person – I would argue that my compassion is actually more of
a fault as it tends to get you into all kinds of trouble. But it’s not the only
reason I lie. I also don’t talk about it because I hate it so much, and when I
talk about it, I sound very angry and very cynical. I am very angry, but I try very hard not to be cynical. I am envious
of people with other types of Bipolar who get the episodes that make them
productive and feel amazing and that they talk about in practically orgasmic
terms. There are inherent dangers to that, of course. But my episodes make me
want to die, and for years my life was nothing but one, long, uninterrupted
episode.

Last year, for the first time, I finally told someone in a
position of authority about my illness. Because of certain truly awful things
that have happened to me I am understandably distrustful, particularly of
people older than I am. But I am pleased to say that I could not have chosen
someone better to tell, to choose to trust. That’s a story for another day, but
it’s enough to admit that I managed to make a couple of really good decisions
last year that changed my life, and that’s the real heart of the matter. My
life is finally getting better. I have purpose for the first time in years.

Perhaps the biggest casualty of my illness has been my sense
of hope and the expectation of something better for myself. When you’ve pitched
your tent on the edge of hell for as long as I have, you tend to forget that
there is a different way to live. I’m trying to be more honest about my illness
and about just how scary and isolating it can be. (And it’s not the worst thing
that has happened to me.) I do think I have a chance of convincing some people
that those who suffer from Bipolar are not necessarily like Billy Chenowith
from Six Feet Under, or like my friend’s father, who has what I have and is a
degenerative gambler and terrifically unkind person.

Mental illness is a bitch. Part of my wanting to write this
blog is to help people understand that some of us who suffer from it are not
trying to spread their unhappiness around. We’re just trying to climb out of
our empty bathtubs and get on with life.

I'm so sorry. Being sick, especially when so young, and especially with something that has stigma attached, is just so fucking unfair (pardon my french). I can't even imagine your anger at watching everyone else who gets to take their health for granted. I obviously have no idea what this is truly like, but a health scare a few years ago gave me tiny glimpse into the feelings and it wasn't pretty. Hope writing here about it can help a little bit.

I am very... VERY loathe to say this, because by saying it I sound a lot like a white person who gets around a black person and the first thing out of their mouths is, "I have black friends!" BUT, I'm just going to say it: I dated someone for many years who was a diagnosed bipolar.

*winces* Do you hate me yet?

I can't begin to understand myself, but a lot of what you're talking about sounds familiar, because I witnessed him go through it every day. Even the struggles in dealing with other people, people that sometimes slowly gave up on him or told him pointblank he'd let them down. People that didn't understand why it took him so long to graduate. It was rough.

He's a kindhearted soul, as you are. And it remains scary and isolating. Please keep writing about it. You can't undo the "stigma" entirely but you can chip, chip, chip away at it.